


Far Beneath the Winter Snows

by Yahtzee



Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: Broken Engagement, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Engagement, F/M, Holidays, Pining, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 04:05:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8875276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: Anne Elliot's worst Christmases, and her best.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acalmingcupoftea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acalmingcupoftea/gifts).



Two Christmases past, Anne Elliot would have told you she was spending one of the unhappiest holidays of her life.

No. She wouldn't have told you. Anne has learnt all too well how to suffer in silence. That Christmas Eve, she would simply have smiled at you across the long dining table at Kellynch Hall, trying to make the best of the evening. Sir Walter would have been holding forth on the disgraceful tendency of men of business to grow as wealthy as their betters. Her sister Elizabeth was then beginning to form her ill-considered attachment to Mrs. Clay, who sat opposite her, the better to smile and agree with every word—even when Elizabeth contradicted herself, which was not seldom. That year, Mary and Charles Musgrove had come to stay, but Mary had declared herself "quite too ill to leave her bed." So Charles sat across from the family solicitor, Mrs. Clay's father, Mr. Shepherd. As Mr. Shepherd cared not for shooting, and Charles took no interest in politics, they had nothing to say to one another beyond complimenting the meal; to fill the odd silences, they praised the white soup far beyond its due. Far above, they sometimes heard the thumping of the Musgrove boys' feet as they ran up and down the hallways, apparently unrestrained by the poor lady's maid given charge of then for the evening.

Lady Russell of course sat in attendance. She alone paid Anne due attention, and that night she felt an uncommon degree of curiosity into Anne's experience at the last ball. Anne had danced two dances with a Mr. Fairchild, the second son of an earl in H___shire, widowed one year prior, without children. Lady Russell approved of Mr. Fairchild's station in life and his ancestry, though he was not her ideal. No man could be called an "ideal" suitor if he had lacked the foresight to be born before his elder brother. However, Lady Russell had been given to understand that Mr. Fairchild's mother, also of good family, had a fortune of her own which would leave her younger son well-provided-for. Mr. Fairchild also possessed those graces of behavior and person that readily drew feminine attention. Given these happy alignments of character and fortune, Lady Russell could be forgiven for imagining Anne within steps of the altar.

Anne had not thought of Mr. Fairchild once since the conclusion of the ball. Their conversation had been civil and proper. Terribly… _correct_. To be sure Mr. Fairchild was a good sort of man, but not one who would make her laugh out loud during a walk in the fields, nor tell her of his dreams for the future without caring how farfetched they might seem, nor teach her how to fold a bit of newspaper so that it might float on the water like a ship.

She might have thought Mr. Fairchild a good match had she never seen what a true meeting of spirits could be. Having once known it, she could never mistake anything less for its equal.

That year deep snows fell on Christmas Eve, which meant that even Anne—by far the most regular churchgoer of the family—could not attend services on the morn. She was left to such private devotion as she could summon with Mary's sons pulling at her clothes, with Charles' overloud cheer fueled by mulled wine, and with her own weary heart yearning for all the things that might have been and were not.

But it was not her unhappiest Christmas. That had been the year after her mother's death. Close upon it was that Christmas after she had broken her short-lived engagement to Frederick Wentworth. Had she ever considered the question in depth in later years—which, as a person not given to undue self-pity, she did not—she would finally have designated this holiday, the one of Mrs. Clay's wiles and Lady Russell's dreams of an Anne Fairchild, as the fourth-worst of her life.

The third worst was yet to come.

**

 

One Christmas past—that was the third worst. That was the Christmas she spent with the Musgroves, the Christmas she was reunited with Frederick Wentworth.

Captain Wentworth, he was now. His countenance shone with the proud light of success and vindication. He could look to past accomplishment and to future honor. Everything he had sworn to her that he would be, nine years previous, he had become. His optimism had proved more accurate than Lady Russell's caution, and Anne was left with the uniquely painful chagrin felt by those who failed to hope when their wishes were in truth very near.

As for Wentworth's feelings, they were all too apparent. His satisfaction in his present circumstances could not be wondered at. To see the one who had scorned him so many years older, her bloom lost, with her brightest behind her, unrealized—to have his choice of younger, prettier girls newly captivated by his charms, girls with no reason to harbor the doubts upon which his love for Anne had foundered—who could resist a triumph? The only consolation she might have had was to scorn him in turn, but she could not. Still he was to her an ideal in every aspect but one: She no longer had his heart, and never would again. That Christmas night, she went to bed with an aching head from the boys' clamor and sore hands from playing airs that allowed Wentworth to dance with Henrietta and Louisa in turn. All the softness of her pillow and warmth of her coverlet could not soothe her soon to sleep.

Yet it was that night that Anne told herself, _No more_. She would ever regret what she had lost in Frederick, but she could not despair. She would not let herself be bent low by a loss that had, in truth, been suffered nine years in the past, simply because her present circumstance reminded her of it. No, nor by her impending residence in Bath. An aching heart was but a burden to bear, one of many burdens that might have been given her and might yet, and what was life if not the bearing of them? No life remains weightless forever. All hearts are scarred.

 _I shall rally_ , she told herself as she watched the snows falling, carpeting the rolling terrain of Uppercross until there was no sign of grass or shrub, only smooth sloping whiteness. _There are seashores yet to be seen and poetry yet to be read. The world contains music I have not heard_. Anne would never again refuse to listen.

 

**

 

This year, Anne Elliot is surrounded by music.

The newlywed Louisa Bennick plays the pianoforte—not the lively Scotch airs she danced to last year, but gentle ballads that better suit the woman she has become. Her husband sits beside her to turn her pages, entirely restored to joy. When his eyes meet Anne's across the room, they understand each other completely. Bennick sees his own revival of spirit reflected in Anne's eyes. Mary laughs at her sons' game with their top, her imagined ailments forgotten. Charles and Sir Walter are deep in conversation about one of their few shared interests, good horsemanship and which young men of the local counties possess it. The drawing-room of the Elliot home in Bath smells of cinnamon and flickers golden in the firelight.

On Anne's arm is Wentworth…no, Frederick. Already he urges her to call him by his Christian name, though their wedding is still one month hence. The intimacy abashes and pleases her in equal measure. How can she deny Frederick this when she thrills to hear him whisper _Anne_?

Even after nine years, he had not forgotten her. His love for her had been like her hopes: Not dead, not lost, merely hidden far beneath the December snows.

Despite the boughs and bows decorating the mantels, despite the Yule log crackling in the hearth, despite the deep chill outside that frosts the windows—in Anne Elliot's heart it is springtime, and everything planted long before the winter is warm again, alive again, opening into full bloom.

 

 

 

THE END

 


End file.
